My son’s poetry assignment. Gave him an archive of children’s poetry to fish in and here’s what he caught.

A Small Dragon

I’ve found a small dragon in the woodshed.
Think it must have come from deep inside a forest
because it’s damp and green and leaves
are still reflecting in its eyes.

I fed it on many things, tried grass,
the roots of stars, hazel-nut and dandelion,
but it stared up at me as if to say, I need
foods you can’t provide.

It made a nest among the coal,
not unlike a bird’s but larger, it
is out of place here
and is quite silent.

If you believed in it
I would come hurrying to your house
to let you share my wonder,
but I want instead to see
if you yourself will pass this way.

Brian Patten

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I firmly believe that the replacement word for “should” is “want.”

Don’t ask yourself “Should I do this?”
Ask yourself “Do I want to do this?”

Do I really want to do this?
Does it fit in with my core values and beliefs?
Does it fit in with my family’s?
Is it good for me and good for them?
Is it a priority or lower on the list?

I have found that close examination of my own desires helps me to be honest with myself. Remove duty and, for instance, make dinner not because I should but because I want to. I really do. There are also nights where I really do NOT want to make dinner, and something else is a priority. A family activity, outing, my rest, sanity or time constraints factor in and we have chicken nuggets.

There was a time when either scenario caused me all manner of grief and anxiety. But I find that being honest with myself takes away the anger of feeling like someone is putting pressure on me to cook. Usually, truthfully, the pressure comes from myself and trying to live up to expectations that are totally unrealistic by design. I am a human being. I am allowed to have faults. Good days and bad. I have found that I do have my own set of rules around what I want us to eat. And I have only myself to fail.

All of this has brought me out of the duty and into love. When I cook, I do so because I love my family, I love to cook and it’s what I WANT to do. Truly.

(Again, I’m using the cooking example, but I approach everything this way. My heart is usually telling me what I want to do. It’s just a matter of whether I am listening.)

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This one is the hardest to write about because it’s the least progressed of my “issues.” How do you know when you feel something, anyway? You just do. That’s how.

However, in keeping with the pro-active theme I’ve got going on, love is that emotion that when I feel it or know it, it drives me to bigger and better things. When I know love given and received from my children, I have the proper motivation to care for them in the daily little tasks that make up life. When I know love from my husband, I am driven to love in return. I think of him, I think of what he needs or would like. I keep their interests close to my heart. And I try my best to put them before myself. Note, I said try there. It’s a work in progress.

Mostly though, when I’ve felt real honest love of late, it’s done something even bigger than motivate me properly. And that’s quite a big thing. Even bigger? It’s healed me. It’s healed my heart, soothing over those little wounds, redirecting my energies to where they are currently needed, showing me new places to put my energy and all around bringing me joy.

My wounds really are too numerous to name and some days too heavy to bear. However, when I look at my children and see how they have grown, see their gifts and struggles, their life coming forth into something new and different, I can look at them and know that perhaps the re-directed energy from the wound is indeed going to the right place. They remind me daily, multiple times, to not let myself sink into a whole of despair. They are hope incarnate.

My husband. He is the biggest and most obvious and most mine choice I have ever made. One of the break-throughs (for me, at least) in our relationship was when I became able to say when I disagreed with him, openly and without judgement or manipulation. That latter one is hard because, frankly, well… I’m a woman. Plus I saw it wielded alot. However, no excuses. Honesty is to me always the best policy. No more secrets. No more hidden agendas. No more accidentally forgetting because I’m too afraid to speak the truth. The commandment about lying is SO much bigger than I ever realized.

This was such a tremendous breakthrough for me. I felt for the first time that he and I were of equal footing on a level playing field, that we are partners working together. And that’s when I began to understand love in an entirely different way. I work, I cook, I play, I do everything for love. For what we are building, for what we are breaking and refusing to continue, for what we are. He and I.

On the issue of misplaced loyalty, I have a new bellwether. If I feel desperate or anxious in any way to please someone by completing a task or assenting to an opinion, a little bell goes off in my head. It says, “You are a person too. And what you want is equally important to what they want. If you have no reservations and feel free to choose in their favor, by all means go ahead. If not, respect yourself. Be honest, but respect yourself.”

That reminds me of anger. When all this evolution of my thought started, I noticed myself becoming angry quite a bit. And it was very easy for me to become unbalanced, unhinged, whatever. My reaction often was excessive for whatever scenario was at hand. In time though, I’ve been able to see that my anger was telling me something. See, anger is a secondary emotion. It is the emotion that is caused by another emotion, and we express it because we don’t’ want to deal with the primary one.

For example, fear. You don’t want to tell your teenager that you are scared out of your wits that they might be killed in a traffic accident when they come home past curfew, so you get angry and yell at them instead. And that because I’d built up this people-pleasing wall over the years being a yes-woman, I’d built up alot of anger instead of recognizing and dealing with my true emotion. My extreme anger was there for a reason. Recognizing I am angry, searching for and naming the primary emotion and dealing with *that* one is probably one of the most important things I’ve done in life. I communicate a zillion times better.

Full circle now and back to the mis-placed loyalty and guilt. When I feel angry, I know something bigger is at hand. And those two things evoked quite a bit of anger. This is still quite a struggle also, but at least I know and can say and repeat the words to myself over and over again. I am an adult. I make my choices. So and so makes their choices. My choices do not need to be theirs, their choices do not need to be mine, and I do not need their approval over my own. If they don’t like my choices, that’s ok. If they get angry or sad regarding my choices, IT’S NOT MY PROBLEM. Those are their emotions and so theirs to deal with. I do NOT have to make them happy. I make the decisions that are best for my family and children. Period.

Best of all, not only is this super good for me. It’s super good for the children. I talk to them in an entirely different way then I used to. We are all responsible for our own emotions, they are all valid, but we are also very responsible for the choices that we make in response to someone telling us we can’t have cake or we need to take out the trash or that we are going to the beach on a nice day.

Rambling done. Peace to you all.

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Yes, you heard that right.

Healing as a resto druid has become an art for me. I always want to know how to play my class better. Today I was bouncing from blog to blog and found this description of what sorts of players play healers. I like it and post it because I’m half and half. Like good cream. Mmmmmm.

The Healer

Healers find themselves in their own predicaments. Healers are often the first ones blamed for a wipe, and at the same time they seldom get credit for a “good” run. They spend all their time playing “whack-a-mole” with health bars, and consequently don’t really “see” what’s around them as much as other classes. Healing can also be VERY difficult in ways people don’t expect. An undergeared tank can be a total nightmare, and the healer may still get blamed if the group wipes repeatedly. Strong-willed DPSers who seem oblivious to threat monitoring can also make a healer’s job a living hell. A bad CCer can cost a healer as well, as the healer is usually very high on the threat list, and the first person a free-roaming mob will go after.

The type of person that likes to play the healer role is often someone who cares more about the success of the group as a whole than personal achievements. Very few people pay much attention to healing stats and numbers like they do DPS, but this type of player doesn’t really care. They would rather see a successful run where nobody dies than a wipe-filled run where they collect loads of epics. You’ll notice one theme in many healers is they fail to heal themselves. I think this tendency goes a long way to explaining the type of person that plays a healer. They get lost in the group dynamics, and enjoy it most when the group works together like a well-oiled machine. Healers often attract the most selfless of players.

Another type of person that can be drawn to the healer class is the player that is interested in quick advancement above most else. If you want to get geared up in a dang hurry, roll a healer. Guilds are always looking to gear up more healers. This type of player is in it more for the gear and the numbers, and they often fall off and focus on other classes when their gear progression begins to slow. They may never take the time to really learn the “art” of healing, and likely will become bored with the playstyle after not too long.”

Honestly, I play a healer because I work as a healer. In both spheres, I take care of people and I like doing it because it leads to meaningful social interactions. lol

Strangely, the two activities feed off and inspire each other. As I develop more confidence with patients, enacting my ideas, dealing with consequences, interacting with others, my game play then goes “up a notch,” I react quicker and less people – in the game – die. Weird, eh? I have fun at home doing almost the same thing that I do at work.

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Thoughts tumble about and roll out of my head onto the page.
Maybe it’ll be a pair…

When I say that I examine my motives, the conversation in my head goes like this:

I am feeling lots of pressure about getting dinner ready/insert any activity here.
Is my husband going to love me any less if it’s late?
Is he going to love me less if it’s not perfect?
Why am I stressing?
Because I feel like I have to do everything right or I won’t be loved.
Because this is what I think I have to do to be a good person/wife/mother/insert any label here.
Do I really want to cook right now?
Yes, I’m hungry and want to cook rather than get fast food.
Do I really want to make a nice meal for my family?
Yes, I value home-made food.
Do you really or is it just what your upbringing instilled in you?
Yes, I was taught this as a child, but as an individual, I find it meaningful and valuable to use my time, resources and energy for this activity.
Well then why the hell are you stressing?!
Put some music on, dance around the kitchen with the kids while you cook and let go of the fear, anxiety and worry that you won’t be loved.
You are loved. Very much. Love in return by letting go.

ps. And in total honesty, it took a great deal of time for me to even realize the very first of those statements. At first, I was simply unhappy and didn’t know it. Then I discovered I was unhappy and blamed other people. Do yourself a favor and skip that step. It’s painful. Somehow miraculously I discovered that only I had a choice to change my circumstances and then moved to step #2.

Go easy. Your motivation for doing something might come from a different place than mine and take some time to discover. And then it might take some time to move yourself to a place where you can actively do something about it.

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